The European Defence Support Services Report 2008 AMR International’s inaugural report on the European defence support services market is now available. It examines support services from cleaning and catering to providing military training and through-life-support of advanced platforms. This report gives a comprehensive, business-oriented review of the challenges this sector faces and the opportunities arising from them. The European defence support services market is undergoing dramatic changes spurred by radical military restructuring programmes. For defence establishments the flipside of the peace dividend was the end of generous funding. Funding cuts demanded radical efficiency measures and drastic restructuring. Outsourcing is a consequence of this. However, for most defence establishments outsourcing is still in its infancy. This low base combined with compelling economic imperatives is driving huge growth in the demand for defence support services that is irreversible. This report examines: • How defence establishments have arrived at their present state of outsourcing development and what are the catalysts for change? • How budget constraints, strategic and doctrinal shifts, and increasing professionalisation have impacted attitudes towards outsourcing • What policies are MoDs pursuing to meet their restructuring aims? • What MoD structures are in place, or planned, to direct and administer the growing wave of industry contracts for outsourced support? • Why defence support services penetration is uneven between sustaining platforms, training, and the defence estate and how this is changing? • Where are the opportunities for companies seeking to provide services to MoDs? Which services will militaries continue to self-provide and which ones will they relinquish to the private sector, however unwillingly, and what form will this take? Restructuring after the cold war Post cold war geopolitical realities led to a reassessment of military roles and capabilities and forced defence restructuring. New pressures and influences emerged to determine what shape the military restructuring would take: • As the emphasis shifted from ‘Battlefield Europe’ to the likelihood of more frequent United Nations and NATO actions, limited engagement roles, and policing missions the need for network-centric highly mobile expeditionary forces became a priority • Defence forces needed a greater proportion of their complement to be oriented towards combat and combat-related roles than was the case in the past. This is known as increasing the ‘tooth-to-tail’ ratio • A heightened threat of terror attacks at home and abroad stressed new and enhanced intelligence gathering capabilities and a different application of force Outsourcing is widely recognised as crucial in attaining these goals. Increasing platform complexity coupled with personnel and budgetary constraints leave modern military forces no choice but to make greater use of the private sector to support their defence capabilities. In the absence of outsourcing, combat capability quickly degrades. An indispensable guide AMR’s report is an indispensable, authoritative, and strategic guide to this market and its prospects.